Only a few weeks ago, the CHRP variants of Mac OS 7.6 and 8 were discovered and uploaded to the internet for posterity, but we’re already seeing the positive results of this event unfold: Mac OS 7.x can now run on the Mac Mini G4 – natively.
The very short of it is as follows. First, the CHRP release of Mac OS 8 contains a ROM file that allows Mac OS 8 to boot on the G4 Mac Mini. Second, the CHRP release of 7.6 contains a System Enabler that allows 7.6 earlier versions to run by using the aforementioned ROM file. Third, the ROM has been modified to add compatibility with as many Mac models as possible. There’s a lot more to it, of course, but the end result is that quite a few more older, pre-9.x versions of Mac OS can now run on G4 and G3 Macs, which is quite cool.
Of course, there are limitations.
Note that, although I describe many of these as “stable”, I mean you can use much of it normally (sound/video/networking aside) without it crashing or misbehaving, at least not too hard, but that is not to say everything works, because that is just not the case. For example, when present, avoid opening the Apple System Profiler, unless you want a massive crash as it struggles trying to profile and gather all the information about your system. Some other apps or Control Panels might either not work, or work up to a certain point, after which they might freeze, requiring you to Force Quit the Finder to keep on going. And so on.
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Issues or no, this is amazing news, and great work by all involved.
What timing. Now I really have motivation to verify my suspicion that, when my Mac Mini G4 races its fan instead of powering on, it’s temperature-dependent and then look for cracked solder joints and bad capacitors.
As-is, I’m stuck with just the Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 2002 that will remain louder until I can find time to clamp some temperature probes onto things without software-readable temperatures, and then experiment with stress testing and lower-CFM Noctua fans.
(As with the hand-me-down Alenware triangle hooked up to the TV where I was able to replace the wind-tunnel intake fans, I suspect Apple spec’d the fans for the dual 1.25GHz loadout, but I’m running a single 933MHz loadout.)
I had an MDD with what was then called Verax fans. Super quiet and remained very cool.
I regret my soul selling it – maybe you can find it. The Quicksilver is a great G4!
Unfortunately, probably not. To quote the description of a YouTube video I believe you made:
I’m not that kind of lucky.
eBay alerts, my friend.
Once I scored a new old stock IntelliStation 285 for like 500 EUR. I set the alert, forgot about it and, 3 years later, joy!
I already have a pile of eBay alerts for various things but I think you’re assuming too much of my budget right now. That’s what I mean by “not that kind of lucky”.
The amount I can afford to allocate to my hobby can barely keep up with the smaller stuff, like white whale CD-ROMs that wind up costing $60-130 when a seven-year-old eBay watch turns up something.
(I *am* quite pleased that I finally managed to find a set of Visual Basic 1.0 for DOS floppies, even if I could have had a more complete copy a decade ago if I’d been aware enough of the supply and demand to bid up to the $130 range. Now to try to figure out what isn’t an insulting amount to propose if I start asking if anyone has an m68k-compatible REALbasic version to sell. That and Turbo Pascal for DOS are the last major holes in my ability to say I’m licensed to distribute anything I create.)
ssokolow (Hey, OSNews, U2F/WebAuthn is broken on Firefox!),
I sympathize with your plight. It’s hard enough to cover the necessities.
Not blaming you for wanting period specific software for your hobby, borland tooling was top notch. But over time open source tools became more capable and my own preference would be to go with FOSS over proprietary dependencies if possible.
https://github.com/freebasic/fbc
https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/user/usersu4.html
https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/
Languages that supported 32bit DOS extenders were a hell of a lot easier to work with than 16bit segmented real mode with expanded memory or far pointers. Then again, I doubt many people are still doing work on DOS and the hobby is probably more about period authenticity.
I’ve gotten rid of a lot from my childhood, but I still have some of it. Nobody local has taken me up on it, but if somebody on long island wants legacy computers and components: motherboards, voodoo 2, and pica voice boards/modems/LAN cards/IO boards/PS2 keyboards/power supplies, I’d love for it to go to somebody who cares about it and has more space than me.
*nod* Generally, I want something where I can put the source up on GitHub and have a libre, easy-to-set-up way for people to develop things.
That typically means things like Free Pascal (for DPMI because it’s got a batteries included standard library) or Open Watcom C/C++ (For Win32 or if I want to write something compact and real-mode… partly because, unlike GCC, one host build supports all targets and partly because it’s got one easy installer for potential contributors) or Retro68 (for cross-building for classic Mac OS from Linux) or what have you.
The proprietary stuff is more a mixture of “I wanted this as a kid” and “libre stuff doesn’t match this for relaxingly polished prototyping experience”.
Hence, thanks mostly to lucky eBay saved search results, my having collected a wide range of development tooling that does RAD/prototyping better than the libre options. For example:
* Visual Basic 1.0 for DOS for DOS TUIs
* Delphi 1 for Win16
* Delphi 2 or higher for Win32
* Hypercard (sorta) for classic Mac OS
* CodeWarrior (sorta) for Hypercard XCMDs
* Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise for Windows Shell Extensions (No ATL in Open Watcom C/C++)
REALbasic is the glaring hole in the Delphi/VB-level “more native than Hypercard and more RAD than CodeWarrior” niche on classic Mac OS and some Turbo Pascal versions would be nice-but-not-urgent to fill out the collection a bit. Likewise, my wishlist includes versions of Borland C++ older than the few I have on my shelf to try to add OWL to my collection since those common dialog icons are so Windows 3.1 iconic.
Unfortunately, I’m up in rural Canada, so I wouldn’t be in a position to help there even if not for the threat of power-tripping border guards.
I misread this as running natively on the Mac Mini _M4_ and was pretty excited.
That would be an interesting thing. But… System 7 does not actually need too much hardware… (given it can even run inside a web page: https://infinitemac.org/1991/System%207.0)
Indeed, you can run it on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYOTAGBqoW0
Morgan,
That is pretty impressive. They even have real VGA output.
It would be a hell of an easter egg if Apple embedded an M68k implementation in their chips, and converted/emulated the HDD as a SCSI device. I bet it wouldn’t take too much engineering outside of the M68k implementation to get a bootable system
Crashing apps is a normal experience of all Systems till OSX. The original Mac OS was great but it was also a house of cards which fell down whenever you shook it too hard.